The well-known Twitch streamer and former Overwatch pro Daniel “Dafran” Francesco has commented on the Overwatch League’s switch from Twitch to YouTube. He is rather critical, fearing for the league’s “death,” but is open to being surprised.
This is what Dafran says: In his stream from January 26, 2020, the streamer Dafran discussed the future of the Overwatch League with his chat. When asked what he thinks about YouTube Gaming, he says: “Buddy, we might be surprised. There are a lot of normies on YouTube.”
He probably does not mean this negatively. It could well be that he implies: There is a much larger potential audience on YouTube than just gamers. That could be something.
However, Dafran is critical about whether the Overwatch League can maintain the viewership levels on Twitch:
The chance is also high that the Overwatch League simply dies completely. That is very likely, I think. And by dying, I mean: 50,000 viewers.
In fact, that would be a significant regression, as the Overwatch League managed to attract over 400,000 viewers at the start, in 2019 over 250,000 viewers were still gathered simultaneously on the main channel on Twitch.
Who is Dafran? Dafran was previously also active as a player in the Overwatch League. He played for Atlanta Reign. However, he left the league in March 2019, to stream and chill instead, as he says.
So far, Dafran’s streaming career seems to be going well. Dafran had an average of 4,300 viewers in the past 365 days and currently has nearly 520,000 followers. And this, despite having previously drawn attention with questionable content.
Overwatch League and Blizzard on YouTube
This is what it is all about: The reason for the discussion about YouTube Gaming is the recent switch of the Overwatch League to YouTube. Activision Blizzard has now signed a contract with Google after the end of the two-year exclusive contract with Twitch.
The Overwatch League and some other e-sports events from Activision Blizzard are now being streamed on YouTube.
